4 




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BANQUET 



TO 



His Eicelleicy kmm Burlimame, 



AND HIS ASSOCIATES 



OP 



THE CHINESE EMBASSY, 



THE CITIZEISTS OF IN^EW YOEK., 



TUESDAY, JUNE 23, 1868. 



f 

\ 

\ New York : 

SXJN BOOK AH^^i JOB BRinSTTIN^GJ- HOUSK, 

1868. 



..57 A/5 






3\ 
V 

1 



BANQUET 



A number of citizens of New York, conspicuous in various 
departments of affairs, in view of tlie novelty and importance 
of the mission from the Chinese empire, which recently landed 
upon our shores, addressed the following letter to Mr, Bur- 
lingame, the head of the Embassy : 

"New York, May 22d, 1868. 

" To the Jlonnrahle Anson Bttrlingame^ Envoy Extraordinary 
and Minister Plenipotentiary for China to the Ti'eaty 
Powers. 

" SlE, 

■: " The undersigned, citizens of ISTew York, desiring to ex- 
press their appreciation of the importance of the mission, of 
which you are the distinguished head, and wishing to convey, 
in an appropriate manner, their sense of the magnitude of the 
interests confided to you, respectfully tender to you and your 



associates a public dinner, at the earliest day convenient to 
yourself. 

" We have the honor to be, sir, 

" Your obedient servants : 



William E. Dodge, 
Alex. T. Stewart, 
A. A. Low, 
Peter Cooper, 
Jonathan Sturges, 
Charles P. Daly, 
David Dudley Field, 
Marshall 0. Roberts, 
Elliot C. Cowdin, 
Wm. H. Fogg, 
S. B. Chittenden, 
George Opdyke, 
Wm. G. Lambert, 
John Armstrong, 
John C. Hamilton, 
L. B. Wyman, 
Albon P. Man, 
Charles S. Smith, 
Oliver Carpenter, 
William Borden, 
Edward Cooper, 
William H. Lee, 
Frank E. Howe, 
Charles E. Beebe, 
Geo. W. Lane, 
Charles E. Hill, 
John Jay, 
M. H. Grinnell, 
H. B. Claflin, 
John C. Green, 
Samuel B. Euggles, 
Moses Taylor, 
John Caswell, 
R. M. Olyphant, 
Abr'am S. Hewitt, 
R. W. Weston, 
Wm. F. Gary, Jr., 
Geo. Bliss, 
James Low, 
William Cotheal, 



Wm. Allen Butler, 
Richard Butler, 
Jos. B. Brush, 
J. Warren Goddard, 
Wm. Watson, 
M. W. Cooi^er, 

D. Willis James, 
Isaac H. Bailey, 
Jackson S. Schultz, 
Fiancis Baker, 
Geo. D. Phelps, 
Solon Humphrey, 
F. J. Fithian, 
Ric'd Schell, 

H. V. Butler, 
Wm. L. Cogswell, 
Sam'l OsgooJ, 
O. E. Wood. 
Chas. J. Martin, 
John D. Jones, 
Charles H. Marshall, 
W. E. Dodge, Jr., 

E. P. Fabbri, 
Jno. S. Williams, 
Wm. T. Coleman, 
William T. Blodgett, 
John H. Sherwood, 
William A. Budd, 
George P. Putnam, 
William Blake, 
Chas. L. Tiffany, 
Chas. Lanier, 

Le Grand Lockwood, 
James H. Benedict, 
B. W. Bonney, 
Benj. B. Sherman, 
Edw'd W. Corlis, 
Dexter A. Hawkins, 
Giles E. Taintor, 



{ 



6 



Seth B. Hunt, 

A. R. Wetmore, 
Edwards Pierrepont, 
John Taylor Jolinston, 
Thomas N. Dale, 
William M. Evarts, 
Josiah M. Fiske, 
Dan'l F. Appleton, 
John H. Hall, 
Nahum Sullivan, 
Wilson G. Hunt, 

B. H. Hutton, 
Hiram Barney, 
Allan McLane, 
W. M. Vermilye, 
W. Butler Duncan, 
Henry Clews, 
Isaac Sherman, 
George W. Blunt, 

D. B. Eaton, 
Joseph H. Choate, 
G. C. Ward, 

Le Grand B. Cannon, 
Henry A. Smythe, 
H. G. Marquand, 
Thomas Allen, 
Sam'l L. M. Barlow, 
Charles H. Russell, 
Joseph Sampson, 
Charles P. Kirkland, 
Robert H. Berdell, 
S. J. Tilden, 
Eugene Kelly, 
John A. Stewart, 

E. L. Hedd.n, 
Augustus Scliell, 
Cornelius K. Garrison, 
John E. Williams, 
Francis M. Babcock, 
Theodore Roosevelt, 
Frederick A. Conkling, 
Charles G. Landon, 
William A. Wheelock, 
Edward W. Lambert, M.D. 
L. M. Bates, 

Abram Wakeman, 
Charles L. Anthony, 
Will'm Orton, 



Dan'l C. Blodgett, 
John Dowley, 
Isaac T. Smith, 
Chas. B. Collins, 

C. D. Smith, M.D. 
B. M. C. Durfee, 
Wm. A. Guest, 
Hiram Walbridge, 
Sam'l Blatchford, 
Richard P. Dana, 
Paul S. Forbes, 

E. W. Stoughton, 
Samuel G. Ward, 
I. N. Phelps, 

0. D. F. Grant, 

D. Van Nostrand, 
Nath'l Hayden, 
Paul Spofford, 
Henry L. Pierson, Jr., 
W. N. WeflP, 
George Bliss, Jr., 

M. K. Jesup, 
David Dows, 
Elias Wade, Jr., 
Anson G. P. Stokes, 
Charles Denison, 
Charles A. Peabody, 
James D. Smith, 
William H. Caswell, 
Thomas M. Markoe, M.D. 
Robert H. McCurdy, 

F. H. Delano, 
Ogden Haggerty, 
J. F. Kensett, 

S. D. Babcock, 
Geo. B. Butler, 
J. J. Donaldson, 
Rufus F. Andrews, 
J. F. Bailey, 
Josiah 0. Low, 
A. Augustus Low, 
Henry F. Spaulding, 
Chas. F. Livermore, 
Benj. H. Fields, 
Wm. A. Booth, 
Geo. A. Fellows, 
Thos. McElrath, 
Thos. C, Acton, 



James Brown, 
Edwin Hoyt, 
Geo. D. Phelps, Jr., 
W. E. Stewart, 
Jos. H. Brown, 
Natli'l Sands, 
C. E. Detmold, 
Jeremiali Lotlirop, 
Walter M. Smitli. 



Jas. M. Constable, 

Francis Lieber, 

Stewart Brown, 

Hamilton Fish, 

I. Green Pierson, 

Sam'l Wetmore, 

Edmvind Randolph Robinson, 

B. F. Fahnestock. 

William M. Vail. 



Westminster Hotel, New York, 
Mai/ 30, 1868. 

Gentlemen : I liare the honor to acknowledge the receipt 
of your courteous letter of the 23d inst., inviting myself and 
my associates to a public dinner. 

I am fully sensible of the honor you thus do us, and it will 
give us the greatest pleasure to meet you in the manner you 
desire. 

We leave for Washington on Monday morning next, but I 
anticipate that I shall be free to return and meet you on 
Tuesday, the 23d of June, if that day be convenient to you. 

I have the honor to be, gentlemen, your most obedient 
humble servant, 

ANSON BURLINGAME. 



To Messrs. Wm. E. Dodge, Alex. T. Stewart, A. A. Low, Peter Cooper, 
Jonathan Sturges, Charles P. Daly, Daa^d Dudley Field, Mar- 
shall O. Roberts, Elliot C. Cowdin, William H. Fogg, and others, 
New York. 



• On the receipt of Mr.. Burlingame's acceptance, tlie follow- 
ing gentlemen were appointed a Committee of Arrange- 
ments : 

Messrs. Elliot C. Cowdin, Chairman, Charles P. Daly, 
Theodore Roosevelt, Marshall O. Roberts, William H. Fogg, 
Treasurer, Edwards Pierrepont, William E. Dodge, Jr., John 
F. Kensett, Sam'l L. M. Barlow, Isaac H. Bailey, Henry 

Clews, Chas. S. Smith, Secreta/ry. 

The Banquet was given at Delmonico's, corner of Four- 
teenth Street and Fifth Avenue ; the hall being tastefully 
adorned with Chinese and American flags, and the tables 
beautifully decorated with flowers. 



The following gentlemen were present as invited guests : 

His Excellency, the Hon. Reuben E. Fenton, Governor of the 
State of New York ; Lieutenant-Governor Stewart L. Wood- 
ford, His Honor, John T. Hofl'man, Mayor of the City of 
New York ; His Excellency, the Flon. Anson Burlingame ; 
His Excellency, the Hon. Chili Tajen ; His Excellency, the 
Hon. Sun Tajen ; His Excellency, the Hon. Blacque-Bey, 
Turkish Minister ; Rear-Admiral Baron Mequet, French 
Navy ; Rear-Admiral S. W. Godon, U. S. Navy ; Hon. Isaac 
Livermore, of Cambridge, Massachusetts ; Major-Gen eral 
Daniel Butterfleld, U. S. A. ; Major-General Q. A. Gil- 
more, U. S. A. ; the Hon. J. McLeary Brown, Secretary of 
the Chinese Legation ; Fung Laoyeh and Teh Laoyeh of the 
Chinese Embassy; Hon. Townsend Harris, Ex-Minister to 
Japan ; Hon. John E. Ward, Ex-Minister to China ; Rev. 
Samuel Osgood, D. D. ; Prof. R. D. Hitchcock, D. D. ; Hon. 



James O. Putnam, of Buffalo, IST. Y. ; Hon. Horace Greeley, 
of the ISTew York Trihune', Hon. Erastus Brooks, of the IST. 
Y. Express ; David M. Stone, Esq., of the N. Y. Journal of 
Commerce; Hon. Henry J. Raymond, of the N. Y. Times ; I. 
Chamberlain, Esq., of the IS". Y. World ; Charles A. Dana, 
Esq., of The Sun ; Augustus Maverick, Esq., of the Evening 
Post, Edwin L. Godkin, Esq., of the Nation; George 
Wilkes, Esq., of the Spirit of the Times ; Col. Charles D. Bos- 
ton, U. S. Agricultural Commissioner to China. 

After the blessing was offered by the Rev. Dr. Osgood, the 
company partook of a sumptuous dinner. 



At 9 o'clock, the President, His Excellency the Governor, 
called the company to order and welcomed the guests in the 
following terms : 

SPEECH OP GOVERNOR FENTON. 

It is a great satisfaction to me to join the citizens of I^ew 
York in extending to our distinguished visitors from the 
Government of China a cordial welcome. (Applause.) The 
relations in which our nation stands to the Chinese are mark- 
ed and interesting. In politics, history, and geography, the 
two nationalities present contrasts, suggest comparisons, and 
indicate duties of the greatest importance and interest. The 
oldest constituted Government in the East invites the west- 
ward tendency and expansion of thought to return, cultured, as 
it is, by varied experience and much progress in civilization. 



In other words, tlie most fixed, and, heretofore, the most se- 
cluded society extends a friendly salutation to the youngest, 
the most liberal, and progressive of nations ; and I cannot 
doubt that results of great value to humanity will follow the 
interview. It is our destiny, under, Providence, to open up 
a nursery of freedom, equality, and progress for the imitation 
and profit of productive Europe on the east, and populous and 
wealthy Asia on the west. (Cheers.) It was my fortune 
to be associated with Mr. Burlingame for several years in 
Congress, and I rejoiced in his selection, early in the admin- 
istration of Mr. Lincoln, to represent our country at the old- 
est, the most populous, and in many respects the most inter- 
esting of the governments of the Eastern continent. His age 
and education, his fidelity to the leading ideas of human pro- 
gress, and his ambition, seemed to me auspicious of enlarged 
intercourse with this numerous and wealthy people, and of an 
advance in civilization, much more than the most sanguine 
hopes could expect, and which the persons and object of this 
Embassy that honors us to-night, enable us more lully to re- 
alize. 1^0 event in modern diplomacy or intercourse has 
equal significance, or promises so much of benefit to the 
human race. A country embracing in one nationality nearly 
one-half the population of the earth, and older than any other 
government, principality, or empire since the world began, 
could not fail to be to us an object of deep and unremitting 
inquiry. Its early characters occupy a conspicuous place in 
ancient history ; even its traditions are full of admirable 
study, and its literature, although of value in establishing a 
firmer social system, was but little known to the rest of man- 
kind. It was even but partially understood, that the benefits 
of popular education were so widely diffused, and that distinc- 
tion in public life and eligibility to high public trust, were at- 
tained only by successful scholarship. So it is, that a nation, 



10 

whose sources of stability had so long been involved in mystery, 
whose system of education and attainment in science and art, 
and whose manners and policy were so inaccessible to us, and 
yet so marvellous in their effect upon hundreds of millions of 
people, could not otherwise than excite the most profound soli- 
citude, and, as the prospect brightens, for fuller intercourse and 
better understanding, by peaceful means, of heartfelt congratu- 
lation. (Applause.) Minister Burlingame, we appreciate the 
friendliness and partiality of the Chinese Government, as re- 
presented by you and your associates, in making with us your 
first visit to the Nations. We appreciate also the consideration 
of your Government, in selecting one of our countrymen to aid 
in carrying out its enlightened resolve to open up friendly rela- 
tions with other countries of the world, to advance civilization, 
and to do more largely what a nation may do, to promote the 
prosperity, the fraternity, and the happiness of the human 
race. I need not say that our national thought is first, but 
not alone, to make our people most prosperous, most free, 
and most just, and also to actively extend our influence with 
all nations, to pass every sea, to enter every land, and with 
commerce, Christianity, and good will, to elevate and improve 
all people. The principle of our institution leads us to the 
recognition of freedom for others, as well as among our own 
people, and we hail every opportunity to develop this national 
sentiment, as essential to mutual benefit and permanent wel- 
fare. We have, then, a conscious satisfaction in the encour- 
ao-ement before us of contributino- to the Chinese our noble 
institutions : the freedom, genius, enterprise of our people, and 
of profiting by their industry, their arts, their social harmony, 
and their peaceful inclinations, in return. In conclusion, per- 
]nit me, members of the Embassy, to welcome you in behalf 
of the people of the whole State, to our chief city ; and, as 
you leave our land to visit others, in carrying out your peace- 



11 

fill mission, bear with yon our best wishes for the success of 
your work, (Loud cheers.) 



The President then proposed, as the First Toast, " The President of the 
United States," which was honored by the company with tliree cheers, 
and by the music with " Hail, Columbia ! " 

The Second Toast, " The Emperor of China," received tliree cheers, 
and a Chinese National Air. 

The President then gave, as the Third Toast, " Our guests, His Ex- 
cellency Anson Burlingame and his associates of the Chinese Embassy." 

SPEECH OF MR. BURLINGAME. 

Mr. Burlingame, when silence liad succeeded the applause 
which greeted him, said : Mr. President, and Citizens of New 
York, our first duty is to thank you for this cordial greeting : 
to say to you that it is not only appreciated by us, but that it 
will be appreciated by the distant people whom we represent 
—(hear, hear, and cheers) — to thank you for this unanimous 
expression of good will on the part of the great City of New. 
York ; to thank you that, rising above, all local and party 
considerations, you have given a broad and generous welcome 
to a movement made in the interests of all mankind. 
(" Good," and cheers.) We are but the humble heralds of the 
movement. It originated beyond the boundaries of our own 
thoughts, and has taken dimensions beyond the reach of our 
most ardent hopes. Tliat East, which men have sought since 
the days of Alexander, now itself seeks the West. (Cheers.) 
China, emerging from the mists of time, but yesterday sud- 



/ 12 

denly entered your Western gates, and confronts you by its 
representatives here to-niglit. (Cheers.) What have you to 
say to her I She comes with no menace on her Kps. She 
comes with the great doctrine of Confucius, uttered two thou- 
sand three hundred years ago, " Do not unto others what 
•you woukl not have others do unto you," (Immense applause.) 
Will you not respond with the more positive doctrine of 
Christianity, " We will do unto others what we would have 
others do unto us ? " (Hear, hear, and cheers.) She comes 
with your own international laws ; she tells you that she is 
willing to come into relations according to it, that she is will- 
ing to abide by its provisions, that she is willing to take its 
obligations for its privileges. (Cheers.) She asks you to for- 
get your ancient prejudices, to abandon your assumptions of 
superiority, and to submit your questions with her, as she pro- 
poses to submit her questions with you — to the arbitrament 
of reason. (Cheers.) She wishes no war ; she asks of you 
not to interfere in her internal affairs. (Loud cheers.) She 
asks you not to send her lecturers who are incompetent men. 
(Cheers and laughter.) She asks you that you will respect 
the neutrality of her waters, and the integrity of her territory. 
(Apj^lause.) She asks, in a word, to be left perfectly free to 
unfold herself precisely in that form of civilization of which 
she is most capable. (Cheers.) She asks you to give to those 
treaties which were made under the pressure of war, a generous 
and Christian construction, v (Cheers.) Because you have 
done this, because the Western nations have reversed their 
old doctrine of force, she responds, and, in proportion as you 
have expressed your good will, she has come forth to meet 
you ; and I aver, that there is no spot on this earth where 
there has been greater progress made within the past few 
years than in the empire of China. (Cheers.) She has ex- 
panded her trade, she has reformed her revenue system, she 



13 

is cliangmg her military and naval organizations, she has 
built or established a great school, where modern science and 
the foreign languages are to be taught. (Cheers.) She has done 
this under every adverse circumstance. She has done this 
after a great war, lasting through thirteen years, a war out of 
which she comes with no national debt. (Long continued ap- 
plause and laughter.) You must remember how dense is her 
population. You must remember how difficult it is to intro- 
duce radical changes in such a country as that. The intro- 
duction of your own steamers threw out of employment a 
hundred thousand junk-men. The introduction of several 
hundred foreigners into the civil service embittered, of course, 
the ancient native employees. The establishment of a school 
was formidably resisted by a party led by one of the greatest 
men of the empire. Yet, in defiance of all these, in spite of 
all these, the present enlightened government of China has 
advanced steadily along the path of progress — (cheers) — 
sustained, it is true, by the enlightened representatives of the 
Western Powers now at Pekin, guided and directed largely 
by a modest and able man, Mr. Hart, the Inspector-General of 
Customs at the head of the foreign employees in the empire 
of China. (Cheers.) Yet, notwithstanding all these things, 
notwithstanding this manifest progress, there are people who 
will tell you that China has made no pr; >gress, that her views 
are retrograde ; and they tell you that it is the duty of the 
Western Treaty Powers to combine for the purpose of co- 
ercing China into reforms, which they may desire, and which 
she may not desire — (cheers) — who undertake to say that 
this people have no rights which you are bound to respect. 
In their coarse language they say, " Take her by the throat." 
Using the tyrant's plea, they say they know better what China 
wants than China herself does. ISTot only do they desire to 
introduce now the reforms born of their own interests and 



14 

their own caprices, but they tell you that the present dynasty 
must fall, and that the whole structure of Chinese civilization 
'must be overthrown. I know that these views are abhorred 
by the Governments and the countries from which these people 
come ; but they are far away from their countries, they are 
active, they are brave, they are unscrupulous, and if they hap- 
pen to be officials, it is in their power to complicate affairs, and 
to involve, ultimately, their distant countries in war. l^ow, it 
is against the malign spirit of this tyrannical element that this 
mission was sent forth to the Christian world. (Cheers.) It 
was sent forth that C/hina might have her difficulties stated. 
That I happened to be at the head of it was, perhaps, more 
an accident than any design. It was, perhaps, because 
I had been longer there than my colleagues, and because I 
was about to leave; and, perhaps, more than all, because I 
was associated with the establishment of the co-operative 
policy which, by the aid of abler men than myself, was 
established not many years ago (cheers) ; and it is to sustain 
that policy — which nas received the warm approval of all the 
great Treaty Powers, and which is cherished by China — that 
we are sent forth. It is in behalf of that generous policy, 
founded on principles of eternal justice, that I would rally the 
strongest thing on this earth, the enlightened public opinion 
of the world. (Cheers.) Missions and men may pass away, 
but the principles of eternal justice will stand. (Cheers.) I 
desire that the autonomy of China may be preserved. I desire 
that her independence may be secured. I desire that she 
may have equality, that she may dispense equal privileges to 
all the nations. If the opposite school is to prevail, if you 
are to use coercion against that great people, theii who are to 
exercise the coercion, whose force are you to use, Mdiose views 
are you to establish ? You see the very attempt to carry out 
any such tyrannical policy would involve not only China, but 



15 

would involve you in bloody wars with each other. (Cheers.) 
There are men — men of that tyrannical school — who say that 
China is not fit to sit at the Council Board of the nations, who, 
call her people barbarians, and attack them on all occasions 
with a bitter and unrelenting spirit. These things I utterly 
deny. I say, on the contrary, that that is a great, a noble people. 
(Cheers.) It has all the elements of a splendid nationality. 
It is the most numerous people on the face of the globe ; it is 
the most homogeneous people in the world ; it has a language 
spoken by more human beings than any other in the 
world, and it is written in the rock. It is a country where 
there is greater unification of thought than any other country 
in the world. It is a country where the maxims of great sages, 
coming down memorized for centuries, have permeated the 
whole people, until their knowledge is rather an instinct than 
an acquirement; a people loyal while living, and whose last 
prayer, when dying, is to sleep in the sacred soil of their fathers. 
(Cheers.) It is the land of scholars, it is the land of schools, it 
.is the land of books, from the simple pamphlet up to encyclo- 
pedias of 5,000 volumes. (Applause and laughter.) It is a 
land, as you, Mr. President, have said, where the privileges 
are equal; it is a land without caste. For they destroyed 
their feudal system twenty-one hundred years ago (cheers), — 
and they built up their structure of civilization on the great 
idea that the people are the source of power. (Cheers.) 
That idea was uttered by Mencius, twenty-three hundred 
years ago, and it was old when he uttered it. (Cheers.) 
The power goes forth from that people into practical govern- 
ment, through the competitive system, and they make scholar- 
ship the test of merit. (Cheers.) I say it is a great people ; 
it is a polite people ; it is a patient people ; it is a sober 
people ; it is an industrious people, and it is such a people 
as this that the bitter boor would exclude from the council 



16 

halls of the nations ; it is such a nation as this that the 
tyrannic element would put under its ban. They say of 
this people — nearly half of the human race — that they must 
become the weak wards of the West — wards of nations not so 
populous as many of their provinces — wards of people who 
were young when their youngest village in Manchuria was 
foiinded. I do not mean to say that the Chinese are perfect. 
Far from it. They have their faults, like other people ; they 
have their pride, like other people ; they have their prejudices, 
like other people. These are profound, and must be over- 
come. They have their conceits, like other people, and these 
must be done away with ; but they are not to be done away 
with by talking to them with cannon, by telling them that 
their people are weak, and that they are barbarians. ]^o, 
China has been cut off, by her position, from the rest of the 
world. She has been separated from it by limitless deserts, 
and by broad oceans. But now, when the views of men 
expand, we behol(^ the very globe itself diminished in size. 
ISTow, when science has taken away, or dissipated the desert ; 
when it has narrowed the ocean, we find that China, seeing 
another civilization approaching on every side, has her eyes 
wide open, (Applause.) She sees Russia on the north, 
Europe on the west, America on the east. She sees a cloud 
of sail on her coast, she sees the mighty steamers coming from 
everywhere—" bow on." She feels the spark from the electric 
telegraph falling hot upon her everywhere ; she rouses herself, 
not in anger, but for argument. She finds that by not being 
in a position to compete with other nations for so long a time 
she has lost ground. She finds that she must come into rela- 
tions with this civilization that is pressing up around her, and 
feeling that, she does not wait but comes out to you and 
extends to you her hand. (Applause.) She tells you she is 
ready to take upon her ancient civilization the graft of your 



IT 

civilization. She tells you she is ready to take back her own 
inventions, with all their developments. She tells you that 
she is willing to trade with you, to buy of you, to sell to you, 
to help you strike off the shackles from trade. (Applause.) 
She invites your merchants, she invites your missionaries. 
She tells the latter to plant the shining cross on every hill and 
in every valley. (Applause.) For she is hospitable to fair ar- 
gument. I say she tells you she is willing to strike off the 
shackles of trade. She offers you almost free trade to-day. 
(Cheers.) Holding the great staples of the earth — tea and 
silk — ^she charges you scarcely any tariff on the exports you 
send out in exchange for them. (Applause.) She is willing 
to meet the inferior questions which are now arising as to 
transit-dues, and if you only have patience with her, and 
right reason on your side, she will settle these to your satisfac- 
tion. But the country is open ; you may travel and trade 
where you like. What complaint, tlien, have you to make of 
her? Show her fair play. Give her that, and you will 
bless the toiling millions of the world. (Applause.) Their 
trade, carried on in foreign vessels, which has in my own day 
in China, risen from $82,000,000 to $300,000,000, is but a 
tithe of the enormous trade that will take place with China 
when she gets into full fellowship with the rest of the world. 
(Applause.) Let her alone ; let her have her independence ; 
let her develop herself in her own time, and in her own way. 
She has no hostility to you. Let her do this, and she will 
initiate a movement which will be felt in every workshop of 
the civilized world. She says now : " Send us your wheat, 
your lumber, your coal, your silver, your goods from every- 
where — we will take as many of them as we can. We will 
give you back our tea, our silk, free labor, which we have 
sent so largely out into the world." (Applause.) It has 
overflowed upon Siam, upon the British Provinces, upon 
2 



18 

Singapore, upon Manilla, upon Peru, Cuba, Australia, and 
California. All she asks is, that you will be as kind to 
her Nationals as she is to your Nationals. (Applause.) 
She wishes simply that you will do justice. She is willing 
not only to exchange goods with you, but she is willing to 
exchange thoughts. She is willing to give you what she 
thinks is her intellectual civilization in exchange for your 
material civilization. Let her alone, and the caravans on the 
roads of the North, toward Russia, will sw^arm in larger num- 
bers than ever before. Let her alone, and that silver which 
has been flowing for hundreds of years into China, losing 
itself like the lost rivers of the West, but which yet exists, 
will come out into the affairs of men. (Applause.) Let her 
alone, and those great lines of steamers, the " P. and O." 
and Messagerie Imperiale, may multiply their tonnage. 
Let her alone, and your own great line, the pride of New 
York, the Pacific Mail — -and as many other lines as you may 
choose to establish — may increase their tonnage tenfold ; and 
they will still, as at present, have to leave their freight upon 
the wharves of LIong-Kong and Yokahama. (Cheers.) The 
imagination kindles at the future which may be, and which 
will be, if you will be fair and just to China. But, citizens 
of New York, I must close. (Voices — " Go on ! ") I have 
spoken at considerable length already. I must thank you 
onc3 again for this kind, this generous, this unanimous recep- 
tion. So intertwined are the affairs of men, that whatever 
New York thinks and feels unanimously, Mnll be felt and 
thought in all the commercial capitals of the Christian world. 
(Prolonged applause.) 



19 

4th Toast — " Our Continental Republic and its Asiatic Relations." Response 
by the Hon. Wm. M. Evarts. 

REMARKS OF MR. EVARTS. 

Mr. President — It gives me great pleasure, as a citizen of 
New York, to join in this festivity, and great pleasure, Sir, 
to welcome you, the Governor of this State of New York, 
coming from the cares and duties of your great office to share 
in this tribute of respect to the distinguished Ambassador and 
his associates from the Chinese Empire (applause), and to 
notice also the Mayor of our City, who, though occupied with 
the constant care of 1,000,000 of turbulent subjects (laughter), 
is yet able, in the interest of universal brotherhood, to share 
the cares of the Chinese Emperor, over 400,000,000 of peaceful 
subjects. (Laughter.) I am glad, too, to notice the contribu- 
tion which the wealth and the commerce, and the education, 
and the intelligence of New York, groups about these tables 
to take part in this celebration. That the Chinese Empire is 
a great nation we have always known since we learned geo- 
graphy at school. Now, many of us, for the first time, have 
the pleasure of looking upon the faces of the eminent public 
men of that great Empire, who do us the honor — a young 
Republic — to grace with their presence this occasion. (Ap- 
plause.) I remember, Mr. President, that the last time that I 
met upon an occasion of ceremony, the distinguished Envoy of 
the Chinese Empire, was at the laying of the corner-stone of 
a monument at Plymouth Hock, in honor of the Pilgrim 
emigrants of 250 years ago. (Applause.) Now, as I under- 
stand it, that being the easternmost point of our continent, 
and the oldest place of civilization on its surface, he has 
been traveling to the eastward ever since, and he is still west 
of Plymouth Rock. (Laughter.) What a great nation we 
are ! We must change all our figures of speech. We used to 
be justified in saying for any extravagance that "it is as far 



20 

as the East is from the West," l)ut now nothing is nearer 
than the East is to the "West. (Laughter.) Undoubtedly w^ 
may recur here to that occasion, in its celebration of the hrst 
footstep, resting upon American soil upon the Kock of Ply- 
mouth, of that energetic and creative power in the affairs of 
men that has over-run this continent, and enabled the descend- 
ants to look out, also, upon the setting sun across the ocean, as 
their ancestors did upon the rising sun across the sea. (Ap- 
plause.) Nor have we stopped there, but pushing further our 
enterprise, our courage and energy, we have brought China face 
to fac3 with U5, eaablin;^ U3, a? it ware, to breakfast, as well as 
take tea, with her all tha year round. (Laughter.) What we 
now are, and pride ourselves in being, China, at least, may 
say in the plenitude of her population, and the serenity of her 
wisdom, " Such was I before I had sowed my Avild oats." 
(Great laughter.) She may say to us, " As you see me now 
you may hope to be when you get to be as old." (Laughter.) 
There are very few things, Mr. President, in our civilization 
that they have ifot thought through and lived through in 
China. Take one of our newest novelties — woman's rights 
and female suffrage. (Laughter.) They got through that 
long ago in China (laughter), and they have put the matter 
upon a broad, logical, incontestable basis of discrimination — 
that women have no souls, and men have. (Great laughter.) 
Why, sir, we find, as an evidence of the wisdom of this 
people, noted among the causes of divorce in China, loquacity 
on the part of the wife. (Great merriment.) Now, that 
would strike us as a harsh rule, did we not know that they 
had another custom of contracting the feet of the wift^, which 
compels her to stay at home, and, thus, expend in the 
household those torrents of speech, which, with us, would 
be distributed through a whole neighborhood. (Renewed 
laughter.) So, too, with politics. Only think of a Presiden- 



^1 

tial election in a nation of four hundred millions of men ! 
(Laughter.) Why, sir, with a quadrennial term, and allowing 
a hundred million of men to vote in a year, it would take the 
whole four years to complete the election (laughter) ; but that 
they have got through with, (Laughter.) The Abbe Hue, 
who, I !iave no doubt, told as much truth as any traveler from 
China can tell- — -for the temptation is very great, Mr. Presi- 
dent, to exaggerate, when you come so great a distance for 
the purpose of telling a story (laughter) — Abbe Hue says that 
feeling a great interest in knowing something of the politics of 
the Empire, in every refined and educated circle in which he 
was admitted, he would constantly call attention to public 
aifairs. But beyond the mere courtesy of "yes," or "no," 
he never could get any answer on politics. (Laughter.) 
When he had repeatedly attempted it, and had failed, an 
intelligent, educated, and polite Chinese gentleman came 
behind him, and, putting his hand on his shoulder, in- 
structively said to him : " Sir, you seem to wish to talk 
politics. Don't you understand that in this Empire we have 
Mandarins who are paid to take care of the politics of the 
country (laughter), and we have nothing to do with them ? " 
(Renewed laughter.) IN^ow, Mr. President, I think it for- 
tunate that our distinguished Envoy, Mr. Burlingame, who 
has taken part in more than one Presidential election 
(applause), has timed his visit so that he has brought these 
eminent Chinese statesmen here to see first the nomination to 
take place on the 4th of July, of nobody knows who, (laughter) 
in the City of New York; and secondly, the election in 
November of the Emperor for four years, barring accidents 
(a laugh), of the people of the United States. (Applause.) 
It would seem, too, Mr. President, as if some of the aggrava- 
tions of our recent politics of the last eight years had not been 
in early times entirely unknown • in China. They have a 



fashion there of worshipping the " Measure," as they call it, 
which is, I take it, equivalent to being " sound on the goose." 
(Laughter.) The " Measure " is the divinity that has charge 
of the prosperity of men, their longevity, the accumula- 
tion of wealth, and success in the acquisition of office, and 
they had the same division in that respect that we had, for 
they had two divinities. The Northern Divinity had every- 
thing to do with thrift and length of years, but the Southern 
" Measure " presided over the emoluments of office. (Laugh- 
ter.) So you see that what is new and important with us is 
old and trivial with the Chinese. (Applause and laughter.) 
But one happy thought has been suggested by your speech, 
sir, so eloquent and so able, that there is one thing that we 
have that the Chinese lack- — a national debt. (Laughter.) 
Take it, sir, with you, take all of it, and bestow it upon 
them. (Renewed laughter.) All our political theorists hold 
that there is nothing that binds a people together to ensure 
peace and prosperity, like a national debt. Take it all and 
give peace to China. (Roars of laughter.) Let them not 
fear that they rob us, for we can soon get up another. 
(Laughter.) Or, if you will make it, as one measure, a bond 
of eternal amity and fellowship, by an equal partition, we "svill 
pay it in paper, and they may pay it in gold. This will 
settle all the complications among the different politicians in 
this country. This will give them something to fight for in 
China instead of fighting for nothing. I believe the political 
institutions of China, concerning which, we have only the 
reports of the telegraph, are very simple. They seem to be of 
an Emperor, serene, dignified, and omnipotent; and of a re- 
bellion in perpetual session, (laughter,) of which there are 
daily and orderly reports, as there are of the proceedings of 
Congress with us. (Laughter.) A nation thus reposing, thus 
established, thus educated, is superior to the chances of fate. 



23 

It has forgotten more than we ever knew. (Laughter and 
applause.) And after all it is astonishing how much human 
nature there is in China as well as in the United States. 
(Laughter.) I believe, upon my soul, that the same general 
maxims prevail there as here. I iind thej have a custom 
there, in the administration of justice, whereby, for instance, 
when the bamboo is to be applied, the culprit may substitute 
somebody else to take it for him ; and that is the course pur- 
sued in this country, in the castigations of the public press. 
(Laughter.) So you will perceive, sir, that if we look back 
to the maxims of Confucius and Mencius, from whom I shall 
not quote at length to-night (a laugh), that they diflered 
somewhat on the nicer points of morals and politics — as you 
are very well aware, and your distinguished associates, and 
few of the gentlemen at this table are wholly ignorant of the 
points in discussion between them — they came down to these 
five great principles that benevolence, justice, politeness, 
wisdom, and fidelity make up the sum of the virtues for 
society. And have we not practiced upon them in our social, 
political, and civic. State, and Federal Governments ever 
since the foundation of the Republic ? (Great laughter.) It 
is true, that what with us is but the gristle, in this brief period 
of our life, has become indurated into the bone and substance 
of Chinese polity. I confess, sir, that I am lost in admiration 
when I look at the few distinguished statesmen and scholars 
of the Chinese Empire who have honored us with their 
presence, and upon the multitude of eminent men of our 
civilization about these tables. Fully, fairly, and honestly, I 
come to the conclusion that if they are weighed, and not 
counted, these four Chinese are equal to the whole of us. 
(Laughter and applause.) 



24 

Sth Toast. — "The Commercial Cities of the Old World and the New." 
The President called His Honor, the Mayor of the City of New York, to 
respond. 

SPEECH OF MAYOR HOFFMAN. 

Mr. Hoifinan said : — Your Excellency and Gentlemen : I 
have listened with great pleasure to the speech of the Gover- 
nor of the State, and of the Embassador from China, and 
have also heard with great pleasure the speech of the dis- 
tinguished gentleman who has just taken his seat. It seems 
to be a part of every official programme, that he is to speak 
just before I do, so that he may have an opportunity of giving 
a hit at the chief Magistrate of the City of ISTew York, 
(Laugliter.) I regret, in view of the fact, that I am the pre- 
siding officer over a million of turbulent subjects, as he says, 
that one like him who could exercise so conservative an in- 
fluence among them seems willing to exchange his residence 
to another city — (laughter) — where the citizens are not as tur- 
bulent as those who assume to be their representatives. 
(Laughter.) Much as I love him, however, I am willing to 
let him go for the good of the country, and we will try and 
take care of ISTew York without him. (Laughter.) Mr. 
President, and gentlemen, at this late hour in the evening, 
in view of the toasts which are to follow this, and the names 
of distinguished men who are to respond to them, if I should 
attempt to speak of all the great commercial cities of the 
world, your unanimous verdict would be that I was unfit to 
be presiding officer of any of them. I shall not, therefore, 
attempt it. Of the cities of the old world I have only to say 
that they are old, and they are gray, and I give them that 
respect which Young America gives to age everywhere. In 
regard to our own, I have only to say, that as a young man, 
as a young Mayor of a young city, in a young country, I wel- 
come here a young American who comes as the Embassador 



25 

from the oldest country in the world. (Applause.) I welcome 
him, and his associates born upon the soil of that ancient 
empire, whose population is at least twelve times. greater than 
that of our own. (Applause.) And I look and hope for 
great things to come from this Embassy, headed, as it is, by 
an American citizen, who pays his first visit, in that capacity, 
to the land of his birth, to be followed by visits to the other 
Christian nations of the world. (Applause.) ISTo man can 
tell what may grow from it. We only know this, that even 
to-day, while the energy, the capital, and the enterprise of 
this new world are pushing the railroad far across the western 
plains, up the slopes and over the summits of the Rocky 
Mountains, away over to the Pacific Ocean, to connect the 
Pacific with the Atlantic, the old partition walls which have 
separated China from the civilized world, are being broken 
down ; and an Embassy comes to us, headed by an American 
citizen, attended by those who were born upon the soil of that 
great empire. (Applause.) And in view of these facts, when 
this great commercial city of the Union shall be linked with 
the great commercial city on the Pacific Ocean by links of 
iron, when transit and communication shall be rapid by rail 
and telegraph, when the Atlantic and the Pacific shall be 
joined together, and when the vast trade of China shall be 
brought. to our very gates, who shall tell what may be the 
greatness, what may be the glory of this young commercial 
city of this new world of ours. (Applause.) I would in- 
dulge in no empty boasting. In the presence of these men of 
sense, these men of brains, these men of energy about me, I 
shall not do that. But I have to say to you, men of JN^ew 
York, accustomed as you are, accustomed as your press is, to 
speak disrespectfully of the city which is your home, that, con- 
sidering its youth, considering the brief time it has had to 
work out its destiny, it stands to-day far ahead of the other 



26 

cities of the world. (Applause.) And if you will spend less 
time in abusing it, and more time in taking care of it, you will 
see what great things will come to pass. (Loud applause.) 
We have an ample harbor, we have a great country, we have 
the trade of the world oifering itself to us, and now the trade 
of China more largely than ever ; and yet, what do we see ? 
I speak of it with shame, that in and out of our port there 
hardly sails one commercial ship which bears upon its mast- 
head the flag of the United States of America. (Applause.) 
What have you to say, merchants of 'New York — you men of 
a country which gave a million of lives, and thousands of mil- 
lions of dollars to defend your flag, and to secure its perpetuity 
over every foot of land in every State of your Union ? What 
have you to say of a national policy which, in effect, strikes 
down that flag from the mast-head of nearly every merchant 
ship that comes to or sails from your ports ? (Applause.) 
As you have gathered here, men of commercial prosperity, in 
honor of this distinguished Embassy, you offer to me the 
toast — " The Comnfercial Cities of the Old World and the 
New," I close my reply with telling you, men of New York, 
to see to it, as wise men, that some policy shall be inaugurated 
' and consummated which will secure what you all desire, what 
you must have if you will make your city what it should be — 
a policy which will place the American flag at the mast-head 
of a fair proportion of the merchant ships which go out of and 
come into the beautiful harbor of this great metropolis. (Loud 
applause.) 



2T 

6tli ToaBt. — " An Intelligent Diplomacy, recognizing the universal broth- 
erhood of men, and equal justice to all nations." Hon. James 0. Putnam, of 
Buffalo, responded. 

SPEECH OF MR. PUTNAM. 

Mr. President and Gentlemen : I thank you for the honor 
of a call to respond to a sentiment which this occasion so 
naturally suggests. 

An age of progress is always transitional. The present age 
is pre-eminently so. And, of all the progress which modern 
time records, involving the advancement of liberal ideas, and 
more just international relations, I recognize nothing so poten- 
tial, so full of hope and cheer, as that diplomacy which, if our 
government did not originate, it certainly has commended to 
the world by the most illustrious examples, and the most bril- 
liant success. I trust the time is fast approaching when the 
whole Machiavellian school of maxims relating to interna- 
tional intercourse will be superseded by the principles of equal 
justice to all men and to all States. For centuries the diplo- 
macy of Europe was a system of strategy and violence ; and 
International Law was practically the will of the strongest — 
that will the inspiration of commercial cupidity and the lust 
of territorial aggrandisement. 

During the progress of our civil war, I read in a foreign 
journal, which is recognized as the foremost representative of 
the press of Europe, in an article discussing the questions that 
grew out of the " Trent Affair," these significant words : " It 
is true we have, in past times, as a nation, done many wrong 
things, but we were always able to fight them through." 

The policy thus shadowed forth has been the world's direst 
curse. It has deluged Europe and Asia with blood ; it has 
again and again annihilated weak but independent States, and 
erected in the centre of more than one colossal Empire, a gov- 
ernment of force, regardless of every sentiment, regardless of 



28 

every principle, except its own absorbing, crusliing, devilish 
ambition. Thanks be to Grod, there is another school of in- 
ternational Ethics ! And I think it a just matter of congratu- 
lation that our government has given to the world some of 
the best practical expositions of that better doctrine. 

The stream will rise no higher than the fountain. If it 
takes its rise from the Jow level of human passions, we may 
expect wrong and violence. If it takes its rise from the 
fountain of Eternal Justice, we know that it will bear on its 
bosom that central truth of religion, the universal Father- 
hood of Grod, and that vivifying principle of all just politics, 
the universal brotherhood of men. It will lead to that law to 
which Cicero paid homage, which is not one thing at Rome, 
another at Athens, one thing at ISTew York, another at Pekin, 
but at all times, and among all nations, is the same, immuta- 
ble and eternal. 

When I consider the more recent diplomatic action of our 
own government upon matters involving the internal security 
of a power with which we are now, happily, at peace, and 
with which I devoutly hope and pray, we may never have 
occasion to war — a power which we believe has given us 
grevious cause of just complaint — when I see that our govern- 
ment has covered the head and whole body of that power with 
coals of fire from the furnace of charity and good will, I 
recoo-nize the dawning; of the Millenium of States. 

CD O 

And when I see our Representative to a people that con- 
stitutes a third of our race, — a nation that dates its history 
back to a period coeval with the earliest nations — a nation 
distinguished for a civilization that has flowered into great 
domestic and public virtues, and whose Ethics, associated with 
names that rank among the greatest and noblest of all ages, 
command the respect of mankind, yet a civilization that has 
preserved for centuries an isolation as absolute as it is anoma- 



29 

lous ; when I see that Representative, not at the head of 
armies or of navies, not with strategy or menace, bnt by the 
power of intelligent persuasion, by the presentation of those 
principles of International Comity and Justice, which reason 
approves and religion enforces, accomplishing incalculable 
practical results for their good and the good of the Western 
Nations, — I see beyond the dawn, I recognize, high advanced, 
the blazing day of the International Millenium. 

And, my friend — your distinguished guest, will allow me 
to hail him as the Priest of the New Era, who, with the 
s-olden rinsi: of Peace, has wedded the time hallowed civiliza- 
tion of the East to the fresher and more elastic civilization of 
the V/est. He has leveled the walls of China by one touch of 
the wand of ISTational Fraternity ; and China is here, conquer- 
ing us by conquering our prejudices, enlarging the boundary of 
our sympathies, and by realizing to us anew that God has made 
all nations of one blood, and that of them all. He is the bene- 
ficent Father. 

Mr. President : I honor my country for a thousand con- 
siderations which inspire us all with a never-waning love. 
But I am never so impressed by her moral grandeur as when, 
in negotiating with other States on questions that naturally 
excite popular passion, she refuses to plant herself upon a 
policy of lust or revenge : I honor her most, when, firmly 
demanding justice, I see her bearing offerings of Peace in her 
hand, while in her heart she cherishes and obeys that precept 
of the skies, " Do unto others, as you would that others should 
do unto you." There is contagion in the example of justice. 
My thought is suggestive of the true mission of American 
Democracy. (Applause.) 



30 

Seventh Toast. — "The Industries of China, and the obligations of the 
world to these industries." — Responded to by the Hon. William E. Dodge. 

SPEECH OF MR. DODGE. 

Mr. Chairman : If I had my written speech here I would 
claim the privilege accorded in Congress, and relieve my 
friends at this late hour by sending it to the printer ; but as I 
have not, I will promise not to detain you over three or four 
minutes in speaking upon a subject, the magnitude of which 
entitles it to hours, — " The industries of China, and the obli- 
gations of the world to these industries." Look at the history 
of China as connected with the silk culture. The Chinese 
claim, and justly claim, the honor of having first utilized the 
product of the silk worm ; of having spun the delicate thread 
from the cocoon, and in after years manufactured with it that 
beautiful tissue which, as far back as the days of Solomon's 
glory, clothed the Eastern Courts in beauty and lustre It is 
said, sir, and no doubt with truth, that centuries before the 
Christian era, China held commerce with Persia, Greece, and 
Rome ; carrying to them the beautiful, lustrous silks in 
exchange for their commodities. And that when our Saxon 
ancestors were half-naked savages, the very plebians of 
China were dressed in silks. I will simply say in regard 
to silk, that the world owes a debt of gratitude to the indus- 
try of China. They held a monopoly of that trade for years, 
and though they are now dividing it with England, France, 
and Italy, they are entitled, as I have before remarked, to the 
honor of discovering and utilizing the product of the silk- 
worm. In our own country, it is but 40 or 50 years since the 
silks, that were to be found in our jobbing stores, were from 
China. I see around me dry-goods merchants, who remember 
very well how necessary it was to have a supply on hand of 
the beautiful satins, with their varied colors, and sarsinets. 



31 

and Barcelona handkerchiefs, all from China. Why, in those 
days, when our country merchants came to the city, those 
articles were the first on the memorandum. For every lady, 
not only in the city, but in the country, had a beautiful black 
gown, of Sin chew. The cost then was about 75 cents a yard ; 
now our friends go to Stewart's and pay $6 and $10 a 
yard. Of late years, these silks have been exported, princi- 
pally in the raw state, to an extent of about one hundred 
millions of dollars annually, of which England and France 
have taken about one-half. The large increase of silk manu- 
facturers in our country are mainly dependent on the industry 
of China for the raw material. But I must leave silk and go 
to tea. (Laughter.) What do the nations of the earth owe 
China for its tea ?— that social beverage, equal in all respects 
to any other, and far superior, in my estimation. (Laughter 
and applause.) Two hundred years ago, it was said that 
100 pounds of tea were imported into England and sold to 
the gentry at from eight to ten pounds, sterling — avordu- 
pois pound. One hundred years after, the trade had 
amounted to 1,000,000 pounds, sterling, and now to 
15,000,000 or 20,000,000; and our own country has been 
increasing in the same ratio. Until within the last ten years 
China has had a monopoly of the world in this article of i ea ; 
it having become a very necessity of life, both to the rich and 
the poor. But I must pass from tea, for I promised not to 
occupy your attention over three minutes, and speak of the 
artisans of China — those who have given lustre to the dyes of 
the world — for I understand there are no artisans who have 
equalled those of China in producing so great a number of 
permanent and beautiful colors which they give to their 
various, products. I would like to refer to the great perfec- 
tion of their China and Porcelain which, for so many centuries, 
they have been famous. Then their beautiful carved work in 



32 

shell, ivory, and pearl ; their beautiful fans, which our ladies 
prize so highly ; and let us not forget their lire- works. What 
could we do without them ? The boys would as soon have no 
4th of July as to be deprived of the Chinese fire-crackers. We 
are assembled here to-night to do honor to the Chinese embas- 
sy, and it is impossible to say what may be the influence of 
that embassy, not only on our own nation, but the nations of 
the world. Who shall attempt to predict the future of China 
when she shall have adopted the modern improvements of the 
age ; when the railroad shall pass through that country with 
its millions 'i Wiiy, we railroad men love to build railroads 
where there are passengers, and what a place China must be 
for such enterprises. (Cheers.) And railroads that bring to 
the coast the industries of China, will carry into the interior 
of that empire the industries of America. (Applause.) 



8th Toast. — "Ancient and Modern Civilization commingling on the 
Pacific." Eesponded to by Prof. R. D. Hitchcock, D. D. 

SPEECH OP PROF. HITCHCOCK. 

Mr. President, and Gentlemen : Extremes meet here to- 
night; as, sooner or later, they always do and must. Not 
Asia and Europe, which are reall}'- only one vast continent, 
but Asia and America — the true Antipodes. Our guests 
represent four hundred millions of human beings, who look 
up one way into the blue sky, while we look up just the other 
way ; who are saying " good night " to one another, while we 
are saying " good morning." They represent the great Mon- 



83 

goliaii branch of the human family, which has made itself 
felt more than once in the persons of such conquerors as Geng- 
his-Khan and Tamerlane; while we represent the Caucasian 
branch, whose latest heroes are Arkwright, and Fulton, and 
Morse, and Field. They represent a people whose annals run 
back almost to the deluge, whose first king, Fuhhi, is farther 
back in the depths of antiquity than Abraham ; farther back 
than the pyramids of Egypt, farther back even than Menes, 
the Thinite ; while the hands of our fathers and founders have 
hardly yet turned to ashes in the ground. They represent an 
empire whose first and last word is obedienGe, even to the 
endangering of liberty ; while we represent a republic whose 
first and last word is liberty, even to the endangering of 
obedience. These are some of the contrasts. But there is no 
contrast of civilization and barbarism, oi semi-barbarism. It 
is no mere instinct of courtesy on our part, to speak of the 
Chinese Cimlisation. Though inferior to our own occidental, 
Caucasian civilization in that ours has dropped all national 
titles, and is simply Christian ; it is, nevertheless, a civiliza- 
tion, and a civilization of no mean rank. While religious 
ideas, which vitalize our institutions, are avowedly beyond 
its range, still it has ideas, whose soundness and power have 
been exemplified in a national longevity, which has no 
parallel in history. The one grand, formative idea of the 
Chinese civilization is this : that the roots of the State are in 
the Family. Obedience to parents is the beginning of all 
civil order; the indispensable cement, without which the 
whole vast fabric of the empire would crumble down. This, 
too, was the secret of the old Roman grandeur. And, if we, 
of this western republic, have not something to learn of our 
imperial antipodes in this regard, then some of our wisest 
moralists are greatly in error. And let it not be forgotten, 

that of all uninspired men the Chinese Confucius, who lived 
3 



34 

five liiindred years before our Christian era, has come the 
nearest to our Golden Rule. In the Confucian AnalecU we 
find this remarkable passage : " Tsze-Kung asked, saying, ' Is 
there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all 
one's life V The Master said, ' Is not Reciprocity such a word ? 
"What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.' " 
Such are the men who are now, after centuries of isolation, 
asking to be received into the great fraternity of nations. 
They do not come empty-handed. Long ago they made their 
contributions to the common stock. Eighteen hundred years 
ago they were making paper ; more than nine hundred years 
ago they were printing books. They had porcelain vases 
before those earthen vessels were miraculously filled with 
wine at Cana, in Galilee. Fourteen liundred years ago their 
boats were steered by the needle. We used artillery for the 
first time, on the battlefield of Crecy, in 1346 ; but our gun- 
powder was almost identical with the " fire-drug," which the 
Chinese had been using in sport for centuries. Roger Bacon's 
famous recipe for making it, a recipe which had to be written 
blindly, or the author of it might not have been quite sure of 
keeping his head upon his shoulders, came, no doubt, from 
China. And still she wraps our maidens in shining garments, 
and still she provides their mothers with that which cheers 
but not inebriates. (Applause.) But now, at last, the time 
has come for China to take as well as give. (Cheers.) The 
great Middle Kingdom no doubt is sagacious in thus inviting 
the fellowship of Christendom. But that man must be singu- 
larly wanting in moral sensibility, who does not recognize 
in this one of those providential inspirations which always 
herald great revolutions. The scenes through which we are 
now passing, will be looked back to by our children, and the 
children of these Ambassadors, as one of. the turning points of 
history. ISTo one of the leading nations of the globe can ever 



35 

go back on the record of these hours, — and China, the least 
of all. She must understand, and she does understand, that 
she can never undo this work. For better, or for worse, she 
is henceforth to be one of the nations of the earth. Every- 
thing she has, comes now upon the sands of the arena ; every 
art, every institution of government, every idea of religion. 
Human fraternity is no doubt the goal ; but human fraternity 
implies the divine paternity ; and as God is one, so, at last, 
must the religious faith of our race be one. Just now we are 
hearing the voice of Commerce; but after this John the 
Baptist of all our modern history there cometh One, the 
latchet of whose shoes commerce is not worthy to unloose. 
By His plastic hand shall all taat is good in all of us be 
moulded into one final and perfect whole. 



Ninth regular Toast — "International Law, preserving Peace in both 
Hemispheres." Responded to by the Hon. David Dudley Field, Esq. 

SPEECH OF MR. FIELD. 

International law is rather a grave subject for an after- 
dinner speech. But I suppose the committee of arrangements 
thought that the new international relations, which this ban- 
quet celebrates, required some recognition of the value of the 
rules which define and govern those relations, and the exten- 
sion and melioration which they are likely to receive from 
the entrance of this new member into the family of nations. 
Certain it is, that there never has been presented a better op- 
portunity for a reform of the international code than that 
which this oriental mission now presents. 



36 

International law is the fruit of international intercourse. 
It is the slow growth of ages, first springing forth on the shores 
of the Mediterranean, then cultivated anew on the Baltic, and 
thence extended into the open ocean, till it encircles the globe. 
The more nation meets nation, the more varied are their rela- 
tions, and the more expanded become the rules respecting them. 
International law has grown into a system, so vast in its pro- 
portions, and so diversified in its details, that it affects, to a 
great degree, the prosperity ajid happiness of the human race. 
Unconscious of it, as we may be, it, nevertheless, guides and 
supports us in ways innumerable. It marches at the head of 
armies, it commands in every fieet, it guards the deck of the 
merchantman, it protects the trader, and the traveler in 
foreign lands. Each new member of the brotherhood of 
States brings a contribution to its precepts. Its tendency is 
ever towards melioration. That great empire which we now 
welcome into the community of nations, will help us, we 
trust, to still further meliorations. 

Our policy is peace. The benificerit aim of the law of 
nations is peace. And, although the day may be distant 
when wars will cease, we believe that it is possible to intro- 
duce such reformation of international law, as greatly to lessen 
the occasions of war, and to mitigate its evils when it occurs. 
If the negotiators of any two states of Christendom were to set 
themselves industriously to work to remove every cause of 
difference, and interpose the greatest obstacles to the occur- 
rence of hostilities, can there be a doubt that war between 
them would be improbable, not to say impossible ? (Cheers.) 

But, however it may be between us and the nations of 
Europe, let us make war impossible, or all but impossible, be- 
tween us and the nations of Asia. Here we stand, between the 
East and the West, stretching out our hands over either ocean. 
And while we turn a face sometimes of defiance and anger 



3T 

towards the former, let us begin our international relations with 
the latter in the spirit of amity never to be broken. (Applause.) 
May the Pacific Sea ever be peaceful, in another sense than 
that in which it was named. May the treaty about to be made 
between America and China, form a new and better chapter 
of the law of nations ; the opening chapter of a new book, 
more benificent than any book of treaties that has ever yet 
been written. I envy the negotiators of that treaty, both of 
them Americans, representing, one the youngest, and the 
other, the oldest of the nations, (Applause.) The wise and 
the good of all lands will say to them : Write that which will 
stand for all time, as the model of a just and equal compact 
between sovereign nations, neither of which desires an ad- 
vantage over the other, but both of them seek the freest 
intercourse of persons, the most liberal exchange of products, 
constant reciprocation of good offices, and perpetual peace : 
thus will they help to build up that international code of the 
future, in describing which, I will venture to use the language, 
slightly altered, of Sir William Jones : 

"And sovereign law, the worlds collected will, 
O'er thrones and globe elate, 
Sits Empress, crowning good, repressing ill." 

(Loud applause.) 



10th Toast. — " The Maritime Commerce of the Globe." Responded to by 
Hon. Chas. P. Daly. 

SPEECH OF HON. CHAS. P. DALY. 

Judge Daly said : I am asked, Mr. Chairman, to respond 
to the toast of the Maritime Coinmerce of the Globe, with 
which I have no other connection except the fact that I live 
in a maritime city, or, perhaps, the equally broad and general 
one, that I happen to be the President of the Geographical 
Society. When I remember, Mr. Chairman, that two-thirds 
of the globe is covered with water, and that maritime com- 
merce extends wherever a vessel can penetrate and find 
the means of traffic, I realize the magnitude of the subject, 
and the responsibility of attempting to handle it in the pre- 
sence of so large a representation of mercantile men, and, 
particularly, within the hearing of the three distinguished 
merchants with whom I am sitting at this end of the table. 
Before me, is Mr. Alexander T. Stewart, our metropolitan 
representative of the magnitude and energy of the palatial 
Medici. At his side is a gentleman, who, though his name 
is Low^ stands the highest in the maritime commerce of this 
republic (cheers) ; and at my side is Mr. Dodge, the Presi- 
dent of the Chamber of Commerce, who has modestly waived 
the large subject, now committed to me, and confined himself 
to the limited range of silks, teas, and fireworks. (Laughter.) 
With his example before me, where shall I begin, and what 
shall I say % Shakespeare's Puck ofifered to put a girdle 
about the globe in forty minutes, a feat that I am expected to 
perform in five, for I take it that that is all the toleration 
that will be .allowed, at this late hour of the evening, to an 
after-dinner speech upon so wide-spread a subject. But, Mr. 
Chairman, we live in a progressive age, and in a country 
distinguished for doing the largest amount of work in the 



39 

smallest possible space of time, so that, without stopping to 
consider whether it is possible or not, I shall, in the spirit of 
Yankee inspiration, go to work at once, and undertake to do 
it, (Laughter and applause.) 

The maritime commerce of the ancient world, down to the 
time of the middle ages, may be readily disposed of, by the 
general observation that it can scarcely be said to have existed, 
as maritime commerce is now understood and pursued. Com- 
merce in those days was chiefly carried on upon rivers, or 
overland by caravans. The ocean was but a limited field for 
its exercise when man was destitute of the mariner's compass, 
and vessels had to keep within sight of the land ; or, if they 
found themselves beyond it, had to trust to the guidance of 
the stars. But this was not all. Universal plunder, or, as we 
express it, piracy, was the rule of the ocean. Every vessel 
that ventured upon it, did so at the risk of being captured by 
any vessel she encountered that was strong enough to do it. 
Force was the recognized rule, and if unable to resist, her 
cargo was the victor's spoil, and her crew were sold as slaves 
at the first stopping place. It might be supposed that, under 
such a state of things, commerce upon the ocean was impossi- 
ble ; but then it must be remembered that, if a vessel went at 
this peril, she went, also, with the design and hope of captur- 
ing a vessel herself. So that the thing was about balanced, 
or, as our insurance friends would say, the risk was equal. 
There were, it is true, some nations that followed maritime 
commerce as a business, like the Phenicians, the Carthage- 
nians, or the Greeks of the islands of the Archipelago ; but it 
arose from the fact that, being stronger and better organized, 
they were able to do it, by driving all weaker competitors 
from the ocean. If there was any exception to the rule of 
universal plunder upon an element which can be the property 
of no one people, but is the common highway for all, it was, 



4(» 

probably, on the part of that distant nation whose representa- 
tives we honor to-night. When Father Kaempfer returned to 
Europe, towards the close of the seventeenth century, he 
brought with him a Japanese map, afterwards published in 
London, upon which the North American coast upon the 
Pacific was laid down, from the Aleutian Isle to the Gulf of 
California. This early knowledge of our coast, we may 
naturally infer, was not confined to the Japanese, but must 
have been equally well known to their close neighbors in 
China, showing that these distant eastern nations were, at an 
early period, geographers, who, probably, acquired their in- 
formation of our north-western coast in the pursuit of mari- 
time commerce, at a period of which we have no record ; and 
if they did, we may conclude, from their character as mariners 
elsewhere, that it was, like the great ocean which they were, 
probably, the first to traverse, pacific. (Cheers.) This custom 
of general plunder ceased only when nations were compre- 
hensive and wise lenough to keep an armed police upon the 
ocean. It was not until then that peaceful commerce upon 
the sea was possible, by enforcing and maintaining these 
rules and regulations, which have now taken the form and 
are known as maritime law. 

I offered to dispose of this subject in five minutes, and 
have but two and a half left for modern maritime commerce. 
(A voice — " we will give you ten.") What I have to say, 
then, in general terms, is that, although modern maritime 
commerce is prosecuted simply for gain, the gain is not con- 
fined solely to the mercantile adventurer, but the results are 
wide spread in their effects upon the welfare of the great 
family of mankind. (Loud cheers.) When Magellan, passing- 
through the straits which bear his name, entered upon the 
great ocean of the Pacific, and his vessel, after the unhappy 
fate of its commander, reached those islands which lie on the 



41 

confines of the Chinese seas, the great feat of the circnmnaviga- 
tion of the globe was not onlj accomplished, by the most 
conclusive of all proofs, the fact of sailing around it, but an 
era was inaugurated for those peaceful triumphs which are 
achieved by maritime commerce, the eifect of which we are 
only at this day beginning to realize, in the contact and fusian 
which is now taking place between the oldest and the newest 
of existing civilizations in the great waters of the Pacific. It 
is now 346 years since Magellan, under perils that have rarely 
been encountered by any navigator, and with a hardihood 
that has never been surpassed, achieved enough to bring his 
enterprise to a successful termination, within thirty years 
after Columbus had discovered America, and twenty-five 
years after Vases de Gama had found a passage to the Indies, 
by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, During these three 
centuries and a half — a very short period in the history of 
Asiatic civilizations — this continent has been peopled by the 
civilized races of Europe, and their descendants from the 
frozen lakes of Labrador to the ocean foamed clift's of Pata- 
jonia. Europe, on her part, was indebted for her population 
to the tribes which migrated from the high plateaus of Cen- 
tral Asia ; as she was indebted for the first lights of her knowl- 
edge to those grand old civilizations which spring up on the 
banks of the JSTile, the Euphrates, the Yang-tsc-Ziang, and the 
Ganges. From the time of recorded history — and long before 
it — the migratory movement of mankind has been to the 
west, and along and within the limits of the temperate zone. 
Though di scrying and settling to the north and to the south, 
the movement went steadily forward, and westward to the 
Atlantic, and crossing its waters kept steadily onward, 
peopleing the southern hemisphere of our continent, and 
passing the barriers of the Rocky Mountains, until, like 
Magellan's ship, it has gone around the belt of the globe ; 



42 

and to-daj stands face to face, and is about to mingle with 
that old and stationary civilization which yet lingers in the 
land where the movement began. (Applause.) It is a move- 
ment that has never gone backward. The Portuguese and 
English, it is true, have connected themselves with Asia, in 
an opposite direction, by the way of the Cape of Good Hope, 
but all that Portugal secured has been a few remote commer- 
cial settlements, and though England has acquired political 
dominion, and rules a vast population in India, she has made 
comparatively little impression upon the crystalized civiliza- 
tion of the acute and feeble race over which she maintains 
supremacy, by the power of force alone. Far different is the 
majestic movement of which I have been speaking. It is the 
migratory instinct of mankind, which has hitherto impelled 
him to move constantly to the west, and around the belt of 
the globe, discovering, occupying, and settling countries pre- 
viously unknown to him, and subduing, civilizing, and driv- 
ing before him the races with which he has come in contact. 
The work which this great movement has hitherto achieved, 
of subduing and settling' countries left in the prodigality of 
nature, or disturbed only by the dominion of the savage, will 
have reached its limit upon the borders of the Pacific, and it will 
then be left to react upon Asia ; diffusing and spreading over 
that land the cradle of the human race, the civilization which 
has been the first of this movement, which it has developed 
and carried with it in its march around the globe. (Cheers.) 
This exaction from the west, upon Asia, will be chiefly 
brought about by agencies of maritime commerce upon the 
Pacific, which, at some future day, will compare with the 
Atlantic in the ships that will speckle its surface, and in the 
magnitude and variety of the products that will be wafted 
across its waters. 

In conclusion, Mr. Chairman, let me say a word to the gen- 



43 

tlemen here who are engaged in the pursuit of maritime com- 
merce in this great maritime city. Were it not for the patient 
investigation and life long labors of the men who discovered 
the means by which the mariner can tell, in the wilderness of 
waters, exactly where he is, and find his way across the ocean 
almost as readily as he can upon the land, maritime commerce 
as it exists to-day, with its rich rewards and its civilizing in- 
fluence, would have been impossible. It is to the men of 
science that the merchant owes it that his vocation has be- 
come the dignified, influential, and remunerative pursuit that 
it is. It is to them and to the bold navigators who ventured 
upon regions unknown that pathways for maritime commerce 
have been opened, and remote and distant parts of the world 
brought into intimate and constant connection. Clreat as has 
been the work hitherto achieved in the world's past history, 
much still remains to be accomplished by the patient man of 
science, and by the active maritime explorer, and as it has 
done in the past, so will it in the future tend to the advance- 
ment of maritime commerce, and to the increase of the bene- 
ficial influences that follow in its train. Maritime discovery 
was materially aided in its earlier efibrts by the far-sighted 
sagacity and enterprise of the merchants of London and 
Amsterdam, and in our own day a portion of the Arctic re- 
gions bear the name of a merchant of New York, and that 
name found inscribed upon our planet will preserve through 
future ages the memory of his public spirit and his enterprise. 
To the merchant, the man of science, and the explorer has not 
always been the object of interest that he should be, and 
neither have been hitherto aided by the mercantile classes to 
an extent at all commensurate with the benefits conferred by 
their labors upon the mercantile vocation and its interest. 
With respect to what remains to be done in the acquisition of 
a more thorough knowledge of our globe, the merchant should 



u 

be among tlie first to sympathize with and encourage the 
scientific investigator, and to him it peculiarly belongs to aid 
the maritime explorer — remembering that the great navigators 
of the past, to whom commerce owes so much, found little to 
reward them for their labors during life except the conscious- 
ness of the immortality so felicitously expressed by the poet 
Campbell in the closing lines of the poem addressed to the 
memory of the illustrious La Perouse : 

Fair Science, on the ocean's azure robe, 
Still writes his name in picturing the globe, 
And wreathes, what fairer wreathe could glory twine, 
His watery course, a world encircling line. 
(Applause.) 



11th Toast. — " The Labor of China and the Labor of America." Responded 
to by the Hon. Edwards Pierrepont. 

SPEECH OF MR. PIERREPONT. 

Mr. President : It seems to me that any one who considers 
this remarkable banquet, and undertakes to find out by reason 
the subtle causes which have led to it, will finally conclude 
that " there is a special Providence in the fall of a sparrow," 
and in the founding of an Empire, and that man has but little 
control over the march of great events. 

The few remarks which I shall make in response to this 
toast, may interest the young merchant, who proposes to make 
great fortune out of Chinese and American labor, and possibly 
also the young politician who proposes to make great fame 
out of repudiation of the !N^ational Debt. 



46 

If you send a colonj of 500 men with their wives, to an 
uninhabited island in the sea, where the soil is fertile, and 
where the minerals used in the arts abound, the future of that 
colony will depend upon its capacity to perform intelligent 
labor. If it is composed of nobles from Europe, high Man- 
darins from China, and cultivated idlers from America, it will 
make but a poor start in founding a great empire. 

The German, Irish, Chinese and American laborers are now 
busily at work laying the foundation stones for the coUossal 
pillars of an empire such as the world never saw. They are 
as unconscious of the work which they are building, as are the 
little coral-insects when they begin to raise an island in the 
ocean. 

The power to subdue the earth by toil, to make it fruitful 
a.nd beautiful, comes of necessity. Men born to ease and bred 
in dalliance, cannot make laborers, and if all were such the 
race would soon perish, without a flood. 

There was a time in the history of this country when alien 
laws were passed, and when foreign laborers were not encour- 
aged to come to America. The records of that time show 
that the Irish worker who landed on our shores, eager to work 
for bread was not welcome. American laborers thought the 
Irish laborer would make labor cheap and reduce wages. 
Even statesmen shared in the prejudice and opposed emigra- 
tion. 

But driven by dire necessity and oppressed by unjust laws, 
foreign laborers would come to America, and soon the more 
sagacious statesmen saw that the future greatness of this 
country depended upon the supply of cheap labor, and that it 
could only come from the old world — the Erie Canal was be- 
gun, and every foreign hand which could use a spade was 
needed. 

Recently, the Chinese, driven by poverty, the result of 



46 

over-population and peculiar laws, began to flock to Cali- 
fornia. The same prejudice against clieap labor met the 
Chinaman in California which had met the Irishman in 
Kew England and New York, and statutes were passed very 
discouraging to Chinese emigration. 

The Pacific Railway was commenced, and now 'tis seen 
that the Chinese are needed there, and the prejudice is fading 
away, and all enlightened men perceive that Chinese 
labor will do for the Pacific coast what Irish and German 
labor has already done for the Atlantic. To-day the China- 
man on the West, and the Irishman on the East of the Great 
Mountains, are digging their slow, toilsome way towards each 
other. In a few short months they will meet. In a strange, 
wild land they will meet — each far from his native home^ — each 
looking strange to the other, strange in costume, strange in 
features, strange in language and habits, strange in every tie 
of kindred — each having Gods strange to the other ; and yet, 
obedient to the mandate of the same great, unknown God, 
both have sailed 'over stormy seas, and dug through high 
mountains to make a highway for the nations of the whole 
earth ; — and here tliey stand, face to face, and they know not 
why ; wholly unconscious that the day of their meeting is the 
most eventful that ever dawned upon the human race. Pre- 
saging these great events, what do we behold to-night ? A 
'New England Puritan, Embassador from the Celestial Em- 
pire ! When your boyhood was at play in your native State, 
would you have believed this, even though an angel had re- 
vealed it ? When in the prime of manhood, you held your 
seat in the councils of the nation, did you even dream of it ? 
I doubt not you will tell us that no plan of yours had any- 
thing to do wath it, and that you will reverently say that you 
are but the humble instrument in the hands of God. 

The great want of America is manual labor; the great 



47 

want of China is employment for such labor. How mutual 
the advantage to each ! The Chinese are patient, frugal, 
peaceful and industrious ; skilled in labor, and familiar with 
the cultivation of rice and of cotton. 

It took the hot and glowing fires of war to burn up the 
fiend of slavery. The cheap labor of the bondsman has 
perished, but in its stead, and more than to supply its place, 
we see rolling over upon the waves of the Pacific an hundred 
millions of willing hands to enrich and to beautify our land ; 
and the unnumbered millions of wealth which will thus be 
developed, when added to the vast commercial values which 
will surely spring up, have hardly entered into the imagina- 
tion to conceive. 

If there is present a merchant, who expects to live thirty 
years, and who wishes his son succeeding him, to amass a 
fortune, in comparison with which that of the Medici were 
poverty, let him build ships to run between China and our 
Pacific coast. 

It is true that the present outward freight from California 
to China is dead Chinamen y those cargoes will increase, and 
it is not an unprofitable commerce. We take out dead China- 
men, but we bring back live ones, willing tillers of the soil. 
We send to France corn and wheat, and gold, and we bring 
back — what ? — live, laboring Frenchmen? — scarce one ! We 
bring back wines, and silks, and laces ; fashions and vices, to 
corrupt our women, and to demoralize our men. 

The completion of the Pacific road, the opening trade with 
the East, and the vast emigration from China, are the grand 
events which follow our terrible war, and reveal something of 
our great destiny. So clear will this appear, even before the 
next November, that the national debt will seem a trifle, and 
no repudiator will receive the votes of an honest people. 

Men, sipping costly wines over luxurious tables, complain 



48 

much of our institutions, murmur about taxes, the national 
debt, the wrongs of the individual, and the lack of refined and 
elevated men in the counsels of the nation. 

The great middle-class, eating their frugal dinners, and 
drinking beer or water, make no such complaints. They find 
that they are protected in their liberties, receive the reward 
of their toil, are able to educate their children, and to see 
them advance in the scale of life. They see that railroads 
are made, forests subdued, mines opened, and that the general 
intelligence, comfort, and prosperity, are unequalled in the 
whole world. The institutions of a country are to be viewed 
as a whole, and when the grand resultant is unparelleled 
prosperity and general advancement, we may be sure that 
the Government is good. 

We hear sensible men express many fears about the finances 
of our country. With the knowledge that what I now say will 
be printed in the records of this night, I venture to predict 
that we are much nearer to resumption of payment in coin 
than is generally* supposed. I entertain no fears upon the 
subject. I see causes at work, (and of these causes the emi- 
gration of Chinese labor is one,) which will enable us to pay 
our obligations in gold as they mature, and which will make 
New York the monetary centre of the world. 

I think it can be demonstrated that present high prices are 
not caused, to any very considerable degree, by the papjer 
currency. The important article of coal is much lower than 
when gold was the medium of trade. The same is true of 
delanes, and of many other fabrics in general use. No one 
thinks these low prices are due to paper money ; neither is 
the high price of labor, to any considerable extent, due to 
that cause. It is generally supposed, that when we return to 
gold payments, then prices will generally fall. Time will 
show that this is an entire mistake, and he that buys or sells 



49 

on that theory will not profit by his fears. The price of labor 
in London is far higher than it was a few years ago, and yet 
gold and silver are the currency. The expenses of living in 
Paris, as I have reason to know, have advanced nearly the 
same as in New York, and yet France has all the time had gold 
as her currency. An able administration of our finances would 
bring us to specie payments by the first of January next, and 
without any general derangement of business, aud with an 
immense gain to the nation. 

Chinese and American labor combined, will soon make 
gold and silver the currency of this country, in spite of bad 
management, and without repudiation of a dollar of our debt. 

We hail the advent of this embassy from the far East as 
the harbinger of great blessings to that over-peopled empire, 
and as the dawn of a glorious future for our beloved land. 
(Applause.) 



12.— The Twelfth Regular Toast—" The Press." 
Responded to by the Hon. Horace Greeley. 

REMARKS OP MR. GREELEY. 

I think we may fairly claim for the Press this, that, with 
all its imperfections, and sharing, as it doubtless does, the 
passions of its patrons, it has done more, on the whole, to 
moderate than to stimulate those rapacious instincts and those 
ambitious passions of mankind, which have been the great 
obstacles to human progress, especially in the spheres of art 
and industry, and more than all of intelligence. We have 



50 

heard to-night very much said of the advantages and the 
blessings of material commerce ; and all of it, I doubt not, 
truly. I think, however, that nations have profited more 
decidedly, more consistently, or rather permanently, by the 
commerce of ideas, than by the commerce in material objects. 
And now, if China and this country are to come, as I trust 
they may, into more harmonious and intimate relations than 
they have hitherto held, I hope that she will gain more 
of us by borrowing our arts and our ideas, and that we shall 
gain more of her, as I doubt not we can gain more, by so 
borrowing of her those which are the less material trophies 
of her progress and her thought, than by the simple inter- 
change of commodities. (Applause.) Mr. Chairman, I heard 
the worthy Mayor of our city make the suggestion, that the 
commerce — by which I think he meant the navigation — of this 
country, was now very materially depressed ; and I would 
not wish to contradict his assertion on that subject. I would 
wish only, on behalf of the ideas which I mean to represent, 
and of the principles which I am allowed to speak for here, to 
make this suggestion — that never, I think, in the past history 
of mankind, has any nation been largely prosperous and 
commanding in commerce which was not also foremost and 
prosperous in manufactures. (Applause.) In other words : 
that the great interests of human industry and human 
advancement are coordinate; that the prosperity of each is 
bound up with the prosperity of every other, (applause,) and 
that they must flourish or perish together. I hope the time 
is not distant when, through the journals of China and 
of America, there shall be brought about a more complete 
understanding between the two peoples, which will lead, I 
doubt not, to a better and a higher appreciation of each other. 
Ignorant nations in all time, and ignorant races and peoples 
are prone to disparage every other race or people than them- 



51 

selves. As men's ideas enlarge, or rather, as their knowledge 
is increased, they come, better and better — that is, more highly 
and truly — to appreciate each other. (Applause.) Such, I 
trust, is to be the consequence of the intellectual and spiritual 
intercourse which is about to be inaugurated between this 
country and the oldest nation of the world, and which, I trust, 
is to be increased and improved through the medium of the 
public press. (Loud cheers.) 



The President then announced the following : 

13. — " One uniform metallic currency for the entire world." 

The Hon. Samuel B. Ruggles was called upon to respond. 

SPEECH OF THE HON. SAMUEL B. RUGGLES 

Me. Peesident : — We are here to-night in that hopeful 
spirit so peculiar to our country, to celebrate, by anticipation, 
the coming interfusion of the commerce, the industry, the law, 
and last, not least, the money of the two hemispheres of our 
globe. More especially are we here, to welcome with proud 
and joyful emotions the advent of the distinguished Embassy 
now present, from the most ancient of the Empires of Asia, 
the cradle of our race — and to express in advance, our confi- 
dence in its varied and comprehensive ability, speedily to 
effect the great conjunction so important to civilized man. 

The formal expression, in due order, of our sentiments on 
this occasion, has been commenced by appropriate toasts in 
honor of the President of the United States, and of the Emperor 
of China ; preeminently the antipodal political personages of the 



52 

globe. The toast now proposed you have purposely reserved 
for the last, to introduce to this assembly a potentate far more 
exalted, swaying a power far more pervading and transcendent 
than all the presidents and all the emperors that ever trod 
this earth. 

This august personage — this earthly " king of kings," is 
money! the undisputed monarch of the world — aye, of "the 
round world and them that dwell therein," — the potent main- 
spring of all the machinery of human society, unceasingly 
and untiringly regulating and guiding the movement of all 
the civilization on the globe — and, above all, as tlie greatest 
of earthly Divinities, the object of profoundest worship 
by a vast majority of the human race, especially in this, our 
goodly city. 

By a singular dispersion, this great power is almost infinite- 
simally divided, and made visible in more than 700,000,000 
of circular bits of gold, with an aggregate pecuniary value 
of at least $3,000,000,000 — each bearing on its face the head 
of the local sovereign within whose territories it has been 
issued to the world. Throughout the broad expanse of our 
American Union, now looking out upon the two great oceans, 
and far away into the Polar Basin, these golden tokens of 
power bear the head of "Liberty," our legitimate sovereign, 
with the classic Eagle coming down from antiquity, the 
historically established symbol of imperial sovereignty. 

Of this great aggregate of $3,000,000,000, nearly all is found 
in eighteen of the nations of Europe, and in the United States, 
The transcendent importance of a uniformity of weight and 
quality in a mass thus enormous, is so self-evident that the long 
neglect of the leading commercial nations fully to secure it, 
and their singular acquiesence in the inconvenience and injury 
hourly resulting from the wide diversity in the existing 
coinages, have become a serious blot on civilization. 



63 

We should, however, remember that the present nations of 
Europe (excepting one or two of the most northern) being 
wholly composed of the dShris of the Roman Empire, slowly 
picked up and put together, came into the world in a loose 
and fragmentary manner — whereas the American Union was 
regularly born according to law, and that, too, by a written 
constitution which unified the coinage, for all coming time, 
throughout the whole extent of the Republic, in its area 
already equal to that of Europe. 

It is due alike to historic truth, and to public duty, to state 
and claim, now and here, that this great measure of interna- 
tional monetary unity is far more American than European in 
its origin. It is true that partial efforts had been made in 
some small assemblies representing portions of continental 
Europe, to bring them into monetary accord, but it was not until 
the International Congress at Berlin, in 1863, that any distinct 
proposition was made in any appropriate public assembly, to 
unify even the three discordant coinages of the United States, 
Great Britain, and France. 

The statistics of the subject are few and simple. Disre- 
garding minute fractions, the half eagle, our gold five dollar 
piece, weighs 129 grains, the British sovereign 126 grains, 
the new French piece of 25 francs 125 grains. The half 
eagle is worth 13 cents more than the sovereign, and lYi- 
cents more than the 25 francs. 

At the Berlin Congress, the British delegates proposed to 
reduce the half eagle to the sovereign, to which the delegate 
from the United States objected, but proposed to reduce both 
to the 25 francs. The latter proposition is embraced in the 
plan adopted by the Paris Monetary Conference of 186Y, after 
careful consideration, and a nearly unanimous vote of the 
delegates of the nineteen nations represented. 



54 

Its adoption Ly tlie United States and Great Britain, or by 
either, would be followed, without delay, by the remaining 
nations of Europe, six of which have already uniiied their gold 
coinage with that of France, and united in monetary accord 
a continental population of 110,000,000. 

It is now known from, good authority, that Canada, and also 
the South American States, and in all probability Mexico, will 
be ready at once to adopt the plan of the Conference, so that it 
would onl}^ need the accession of the civilized nations of 
Eastern Asia — for which, under the happy auspices of this 
evening, we may confidently look — fully to gratify the com- 
prehensive wish of the toast now proposed, for " One Uniform 
Metallic Currency [meaning money] for the Entire World." 
By such a consummation, the American eagle and its subdi- 
visions would have precisely the same value and the same 
currency at New York and Pekin, at London and Paris, 
at Valparaiso and Archangel, on the Alps and on the 
Andes' — on all the lands and all the seas of our terraqueous 
globe. • 

If the members of the Paris Conference did any thing 
whatever deserving the approval of their fellow men, it was 
their prompt and unanimous resolution in favor of a single 
standard of money, to consist exclusively of gold, thereby 
condemning, and cutting up by the roots, all attempts, by 
mere legislation, to fix the comparative values of gold and 
silver, in their very nature incessantly fluctuating, and gov- 
erned only by the inexorable law of demand and supply. If 
this be so — and who can deny it ? — legal money may consist 
either of gold or silver, but, practically, cannot consist of both. 
One or the other, whether coined or uncoined, will fluctuate 
as merchandise, and be sold as such. Let us, therefore, fully 
comprehend the significance of the little word, " One," wisely 
inserted in the toast, as having peculiar force and value. 



65 

This superfluous weight of 3|- per cent, in our gold coinage is 
the pernicious result of these vain attempts to fix by law the 
comparative value of gold and silver. As long ago as 1834, 
the idea was abandoned by Congress, who then reduced the 
weight of our gold nearly 5 per cent. No good reason can 
now be given why the present excess of 3|- per cent, should 
not be discarded at once. As soon as it shall be extracted 
from our eagles, thereby equalizing their weight with the 
corresponding coins in France and Great Britain, all will 
freely circulate, side by side, around the world, unobstructed 
by brokerage, recoinage or other impediment. The yearly 
loss to the world by the present needless recoinages and bro- 
kerages, amounts to several millions of dollars. 

It is a singular fact, that the American Union, which yields 
the greatest part of the annual product of gold in the world, 
and is soon to produce a still greater portion, constantly coins it 
into eagles by tens of millions, and sends them out to Europe, 
only to be instantly recoined, on their arrival. It is indeed " a 
sorry sight " to see the imperial bird, the very type of the great 
Kepublic, crossing the ocean, and touching the Continent 
only to descend into the melting pots of the mints of Paris 
and London. For one, Mr. President, I confess that I do not 
relish the performances of these transatlantic crucibles, trans- 
muting his noble plumage into the grim moustache of the 
Third l^apoleon, or the waving tresses of Queen Yictoria. On 
the contrary, I shall unceasingly labor to break them up, by 
lightening his needless load, so that he may cross the European 
continent, free from further molestation, to visit his kindred 
eagles in Prussia, Austria and Russia, not forgetting on his 
way to look in upon the intelligent and trusty friends in 
Turkey of a world-wide coinage, one of whom, the accom- 
plished Minister Plenipotentiary of the Sultan, now honors 
this assembly with his presence. 



56 

We have listened this evening, with the highest satisfac- 
tion and instruction, to the glowing and noble words of the 
Chief of the Embassy now before ns, inculcating the sacred 
principles of equal justice and full reciprocity, as the very 
foundation-stone, laid in remote antiquity, of the public policy 
of China, embodied in their maxim, older than the coming of 
Christ, " Do not unto others what you would not have others 
do unto you," Guided by this truly golden rule, may not our 
government at Washington, amid the many commingling 
elements of a common and advancing civilization, now well 
ask the government at Pekin, to receive the metallic money 
of the United States, especially when unified with that of 
Europe, and to coin for us, in return, the money of the em- 
pire, bearing its peculiar emblems, but of equal weight and 
value ? Mr. President, if I can read aright the animated and 
expressive features of our long-valued friend and compatriot 
at your side, the head of this honorable Embassy, he will cer- 
tainly be ready, at the proper time, respectfully to consider 
this suggestion. • His government, surely, will not fail to per- 
ceive, that the completed monetary unity of our " Occidental" 
world, including Great Britain and Russia, necessarily draw- 
ing after them their wide-spread territories in Hindustan and 
Australia, and along the upper Pacific, will carry the uniform 
coin to the very Wall of China. Is it credible that, with the 
high enlightenment of such an Embassy, the statesmen of 
China will consent thereafter to remain for a moment in soli- 
tary and selfish isolation, the only exile from the great family 
of nations? 

Last July a paragraph appeared in one of the Paris news- 
papers, stating that a company in China had undertaken the 
work of striking silver coins, of European fashion, of one franc, 
ten francs, and twenty francs, bearing on their face the head of 
the Chinese Emperor, and on the reverse the flying dragon, 



6Y 

the long established emblem of the Empire. I cannot bnt 
regard such a creature as tolerably fitted to " break the 
ice " in this monetary effort, especially in Asia. I am also com- 
forted and flattered, Mr. President, by the assurance of an emi- 
nent geologist, that this grotesque and ancient monster is the 
huge pre-adamite prototype or ancestor of the modest and 
unpretending " eagle " of our happy land. 

From the bottom of my heart I rejoice in beholding him, 
as I now do, emblazoned on the Imperial flag, of golden yel- 
low, of the Celestial Empire, so closely entwined with the im- 
perishable ensign of the American Union, but I shall rejoice, 
with a far deeper joy, to see him emblazoned on the uniform 
coinage of gold, so long desired, forming part of that majestic 
monetary belt which must, sooner or later, in God's great 
providence, encircle the globe. 



In reply to invitations to be present, the following letters, 
among others, were received by the Committee of Arrange- 
ments : 

FROM SECRETARY SEWARD. 

Department op State, June 30, 1868. 
Gentlemen : I regret that my engagements at the capital 
render it impossible for me to accept your kind invitation to 
the dinner which you propose to give to the Legation from 
China. On all subjects which concern the commercial rela- 
tions of the United States and China, a mutual understanding 
exists between Prince Kung, at the head of foreign affairs in 
that empire, and the head of the Department of State of the 
United States. Mr. Burlingame is authorized to communi- 
cate to you Prince Kung's views and sentiments in regard to 
those international interests, and my esteemed friends, their 
Excellencies Chih-Tajen and Sun Tajen, I am sure, will kindly 



58 

be the interpreters of mine. Wishinaj you a celebration 
worthy of the magnitude of tlie occasion, I am, gentlemen, 
with great respect, your humble servant, 

WM. H. SEWABD. 

To Messrs. Elliot C. Cowdin, Charles P. Daly, Theodore Roosevelt, 
Marshall 0. Roberts, J. F. Kensett, William H. Fogg, Edwards 
PiERREPONT, William E. Dodge, Jr., S. L. M. Barlow, Isaac H. 
Bailey, Henry Clews, Charles S. Smith, Committee of Arrangements. 



FROM SENATOR MORGAN. ' 

United States Senate Chamber, 
Washington, June 10. 
Sir : You have honored me with an invitation to a dinner 
to be given by citizens of JSTew York to Mr. Burlingame and 
his associates of the Chinese embassy, on the 23d inst. The 
session of Congress is so near its close that I am reluctantly 
compelled to deay myself the satisfaction which its acceptance 
would aiford me. As a merchant of New York I applaud 
this mark of respect. The most populous city of the nation 
wisely emulates the young and thriving metropolis of the 
Pacific States in offering to these representatives of the great 
Oriental power attentions so well their due. We welcome the 
embassy at a transformation period. Their advent, in itself, 
one of the weightiest evidences of a new order of international 
relationship, occurs at a junction most opportune for us. Sec- 
tional interests have become merged, internal improvements 
are reaching greater usefulness, our broadest rivers are being 
bridged, and our lines of telegraph and railway, are soon to 
connect all parts of the country with ports and places most 
easily reached from China and Eastern Asia. To commerce 
the visit is auspicious. We shall not overrate its importance 
however high our estimate. Intercourse with China will also 



59 

afford broader standards for population and prodnctive indus- 
try ; and our rapid growth must soon force us to contemplate 
certain economic features peculiar to that country, as in com- 
pactness and extent of habitable territory, favorableness of 
climate, and capacity to sustain a vast population, no nation 
so much resembles that great Empire as the United States. 

I need not refer to the causes that concurred in preparing us 
to receive these representatives, and that induced China to 
cast aside the non-intercourse policy of ages — to seek her place 
among the nations. But we may profit by the wisdom that 
accredited an Embassy, selected in the spirit of true statesman- 
ship, to all treaty powers, charged with a mission so practical. 
That country, in an important respect, offers us the experience 
of centuries. Her municipal functionaries are held to single 
responsibility for local good order. In a densely populated 
empire, numbering a third of the population of the globe, 
this fact is there, as it must become here, a question of vital 
moment. China produces great staples which we need, and 
we in turn supply largely of what they lack. They are not a 
maritime people ; we are. They are a trading people ; so is 
the United States. Enlarged intercom^se, therefore, must pro- 
mote the prosperity of both, and we may lay deep the founda- 
tions of this rising commerce. Nature has favored this in 
many ways. True, an ocean lies between the two countries, 
but it is an ocean singularly free of perils, and will become 
at once of ready and cheap intercommunication. Towards 
fostering this intercourse, I need not say that you, sir, and 
those whom you represent on this occasion, have an important 
duty to perform. I trust that the courtesies everywhere 
extended to the embassy, will satisfy the government they 
represent of the high value placed upon their friendship. 

With much esteem, your obedient servant, 

E. D. MOEGAI^. 

Mr. Elliot C. Cowdin. 



60 

FROM THE BRITISH MINISTER. 

Washington, June 21, 1868. 

Sir : I shall be much obliged to you if you will express to 
the Committee of Arrangements for the dinner to be given 
to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, and his associates of the 
Chinese Legation, my sincere gratitude for the honor they 
have done me in inviting me to that dinner. 

However much I sympathize with Mr. Burlingame, and 
with the objects of his mission, I am afraid that it is quite 
impossible for me, with a due regard to the duties of my own 
mission, to absent myself just now from Washington ; and I 
therefore beg you to present my excuses to the Committee, 
and to express my regret that I cannot do myself the honor 
of accepting their invitation. 

I remain, sir, very truly yours, 

EDWARD THOENTON. 

Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq. 



FROM THE FRENCH MINISTER. 

Legation de France, aux Etats-Unis, ) 
Washington, 11 Juin, 1868. ) 

Monsieur: L'invitation, que vous m'avez fait I'honneur de 
m'adresser au nom du comite que vous presidez, vient de me 
parvenir. J'aurais ete heureux de I'accepter et de donner a 
mon ancien collegue, M. Anson Burlingame un temoignage 
de ma sincere estime en assistant au diner qui lui est donne 
par la Yille de Kew York, si mes occupations ne me faisaient 
craindre de ne pouvoir quitter Washington a I'epoque in- 
diquee. 

Je vous prie done a regret, de vouloir bien accepter mes 
excuses. 



61 

Agreez, Monsieur, avec mes remerciments I'assurance de ma 

consideration la plus distinguee. 

BEETHEMY. 
Monsieur Elliot C. Cowdin. 



Prussian Legation, June 11, 1868. 

SiK : I have received your letter of the 8th inst., with the 
obliging invitation to a public dinner to be given by the citi- 
zens of ]^ew York to the Honorable Anson Burlingame and 
his associates of the Chinese Embassy. 

In answer, I beg to express my sincere regret that my offi- 
cial duties will not allow me to leave Washington at the time 
indicated in your letter. 

I have the honor to be, sir, very respectfully, 

Your obedient servant, 
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., EK. v. GEKOLT. 

Chairman, &c., New York. 



Belgian Legation, 
Washington, June 10, 1868. 

Sir : I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your 
letter dated June 8th. 

I very much regret that arrangements previously made, and 
which cannot be altered, must prevent my being in ISTew 
York on the 23d instant, and my availing myself of the in- 
vitation I have had the honor of receiving through you, to 
attend the dinner given to the Chinese Mission. 
I am, sir, your obedient servant, 

MAUEICE DELFOSSE. 
Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., 

Chairman, &c., &c.. New York. 



62 



Newport, R. I., June nth, 1868. 

Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., J^ew York, 

Sir : Your note of the 8th inst. inviting me to attend a 
public dinner to be given by the citizens of IS^ew York to the 
Chinese embassy on Tuesday next, has just reached me at this 
place. 

Whilst fully appreciating the courtesy thus extended to me, 
I regret that personal circumstances make it impossible for 
me to accept the invitation to be present on this interesting 
occasion. 

Please accept, sir, the assrfrance of my high consideration. 
N. W. DE WETTEESTEDT, 

Minister of Sweden and Norwa/y. 



FROM THE SPANISH MINISTER. 

Washington, June 23, 1868. 

Sir : I have received your kind invitation to attend a 
public banquet to be given by the citizens of Kew York to 
the Chinese embassy on Tuesday next, 23d instant. 

I regret to answer that it is not in my power to accept, as I 
would desire, the invitation, as many pressing business pre- 
vent me actually to leave Washington. 

Please accept my cordial thanks, and believe me respect- 

fully, ' 

1 our obedient servant, 

FACUNDO GONI. 
To Hon. Elliot C. Cowdin, 

New York. 



63 

FROM THE EIGHT REVEREND BISHOP POTTER, N. Y. 

38 E. 22d Stbeet, June 15, 1868. 
Dear Sir : On my return to town I found your favor 
honoring me with an invitation to the public dinner to be 
given on the 23d, by the citizens of New York, to Mr. Bur- 
lingame, and his associates of the Chinese embassy. 

I highly appreciate the interest and importance of this re- 
markable movement, and would gladly unite in doing honor 
to those who have a leading part in it. But I regret to say 
that my engagements will deprive me of the pleasure of ac- 
cepting your kind invitation. 

Very faithfully yours, 

HOKATIO POTTER. 

To Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq. 



FROM THE MOST REVEREND ARCHBISHOP McCLOSKEY. 

New York, June 13, 1868. 
Hon. Elliot C. Cowdin, 

Dear Sir : I beg to acknowledge, with many thanks, 
the receipt of your kind favor of the 9th inst., in which you, 
as chairman of the committee of arrangements, invite me to 
attend a public dinner, to be given by the citizens of New 
York to the Honorable Anson Burlingame, and his associates 
of the Chinese embassy. 

I should be most happy to unite with my fellow-citizens 
in paying this mark of honor and respect to such distinguished 
visitors and guests, but I regret to say that, on the day men- 
tioned, I shall not be in the city. 

With renewed thanks for your courteous invitation, 
I remain, dear sir, very respectfully yours, 
JOHN M'CLOSKEY, 
A'Vjp. of New York, 



64 

RosLYN, Long Island, June 9, 1868. 

My Dear Sir : An embassy to the United States, from 
the vast and populous empire of China, commissioned to estab- 
lish liberal commercial relations between the two countries, one 
of which has for so many centuries been closed against the 
rest of the world, is an event of such magnitude and import- 
ance, to say nothing of its novelty, as to make it well worthy 
of the public demonstration which it is proposed to make on 
the 23d of this month. 

While I thank the connnittee, of which you are chair- 
man, for their obliging invitation to be present, I am pre- 
vented, by various causes, from accepting it. 

I am, sir, very truly yours, 

W. C. BEYANT. 

Elliot C. Cowdin, Esq., 

Chairman, etc., etc. 



Legation op Italy, | 

Washington, 10 Juin, 1868. f 

Cher Monsieur: Je viens de recevoir une lettre de 
votre part du 8 Juin, pour une invitation a diner. 

Tres reconnaissant de votre invitation, je dois tontefois 
me priver du ])laisir d'en proliter, car des atiaires du 
service me rctienuent a AVashiugton 

Verullez agrcer V ex]>ression de nia phis parfaite con- 
sideration. 

M. CERHUTI. 
Monsieur Elliot C. Cowdin. 



65 

Washington, D. C, lHh of June, 1868, 

Sm : On my return to Washington this morning, after a 
short absence, I had the honor to receive the letter of 8th 
inst., through which you kindly inform me, that I am invited 
to attend a public dinner, given by the citizens of New York 
to the Hon. Anson Burlingame, and his associates of the Chi- 
nese embassy, on Tuesday, 23d of June. 

Honored, as I should feel, to participate in this demonstrar 
tion of sympathy and consideration shown to a citizen of the 
United States, whose eminent qualities have placed him at 
the head of a work of civilization, in which my country, too, 
claims to share to the best of its abilities, I am extremely 
sorry that official duties will retain me in Washington at the 
time fixed for the entertainment! 

In returning you my best thanks, I, therefore, beg you to 

present my excuses to the Committee, and remain, sir, 

Your obedient servant, 

F. BILLE, 

Charge d'' affaires for DenmarJc. 
Hon. Elliot C. Cowdin. 

New York. 



" BINDER *, 



